Defining Poetry

Poetry is an art. Defining an art in words is tough I guess. However, my personal favorite definition of poetry is the one from Wordsworth - "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings from emotions recollected in tranquility". Here is my attempt to try to define poetry in a poem itself. The following kavithai should be titled "Kavithai enbathu..." Click on the following to enlarge the image.

Today's photograph is again of a "kavithai" which will be 3yrs old soon, written by my wife.

They also serve...

Today's stance is a poem (click on it for bigger font). The feeling/emotion of the poem is original though the flow can be attributed to John Milton in his poem "On His Blindness" I guess from Paradise Lost or Regained. The title of today's post are the starting phrases of the famous last line of the same - "They also serve who only stand and wait". Pic was taken with my Canon P&S when I used to be single and the "model" shown there is me.

Puththaandu Vaazhthukkal

Today is Tamil New Year 's day - first day of the first month per tamil calendar. Hence, to begin with "Iniya Puththandu Nalvazhthukkal" (Happy new year greetings). Two things caught my attention related to that -

1. There is a name to every year per the tamil calendar - 60 of them and they keep rotating. This new year is called "Virodhi" - which means "enemy" in tamil. Odd enough name for a new year. Lets pray for eradicating the term "enemy" altogether from humanity - The more we talk about it and recognize it, I feel, the more we are moving away from civilization and towards animal nature and losing our sixth sense to see reason to co-exist.

2. Interestingly enough, the manipulator of sorts, the tamilnadu politician Karunanidhi has called for celebrating tamil new year on Jan 15th instead of mid april. An utterly useless initiative when there are million deserving things needing a state head's attention. May be an election stunt. This is how I see it - For a moment, lets forget about being religious and also lets forget about a religious edict coming from an athiest aatma. The least thing that having the pongal and tamil new year on separate days has helped for is the feeling on joyousness and being with family on more occasions than one and secondly, even the average joe who is selling flowers, fruits and other pooja items near temples etc is benefited by seeing two profitable days in their otherwise struggle-torn existence.

Let this new year atleast provide a solution to handle such mean-minded folks from becoming way powerful and beyond check.

Note on Pics - given my family/work committments, its becoming increasingly difficult to go out and shoot enough pics to find a relevant one for all posts I pose. Hence trying to decouple them from now on - it will be a still and a stance, may or may not be related.